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News: Enough Rope

[PICTURED]: The Final Fantasy VII Remake development team take time out of their production schedule to make a guest appearance on South Park.

Nomura Opens Up About Final Fantasy VII Remake’s Battles

The Final Fantasy brand is in crisis. The series is in the midst of a steep decline, and that decline is not due to a lack of innovation. Rather, Final Fantasy‘s ill fortunes are largely due to the fact that Square Enix cares much more about the opinions and preferences of people who do not play Final Fantasy than they do about the fans of the series who have supported the brand up until now. As a result of this the mainline series is fast becoming something that is almost unrecognisable, as the company attempts to chase after a demographic that has never given two shits about JRPGs. The fact that Final Fantasy XV is going to use mindless hack and slash action combat mechanics was always inevitable, as the project was derived from Final Fantasy Versus XIII, which was always designed to be as such. Sure, it would have been nice if the team had developed some actually competent action mechanics, but the fact that it was going to be an action RPG was always set in stone.

The situation is somewhat different for Final Fantasy VII Remake though. Final Fantasy XV‘s choice of battle system in no way made it inevitable that Final Fantasy VII Remake would have to follow suit – it was only that in combination with the bloody-mindedness of Square Enix which ushered it in as a certainty. The original game, Final Fantasy VII, used Squaresoft’s much loved ATB battle system, which allowed for much in the way of elemental flexibility and strategy – which was an absolute must given the game’s focus on materia. The fact that Square Enix decided to junk this rock solid foundation for hack and slash action battles is a fucking travesty!

This week Final Fantasy VII Remake‘s director, a sentient slab of feces molded to somewhat resemble a misshapen human, revealed to Dengeki that:

“If it had past materials like Kingdom Hearts, the basics would have been easy to understand, and the staff can understand the hurdles we’ve had to overcome, but at any rate, the battles in Final Fantasy VII have greatly changed from the original, since they’re something with more action in them.

The next time I release information about Final Fantasy VII Remake, I think that I’ll definitely have to explain the specifics of what the battle system has become to the players. I think right now that nobody is really able to imagine a concrete battle, so I’m in the middle of coming up with steps that I can show and explain to people, ‘It’s this kind of battle.”

Gamers are having trouble imagining a ‘concrete battle’, eh? A concrete battle would not perchance look anything like a shit battle, would it? One only asks because Final Fantasy VII Remake‘s battles look quite a lot like shit.

Of all the patronising nonsense! People can see exactly what Final Fantasy VII Remake‘s battles entail, and many people who grew up with Final Fantasy VII do not care for it at all – not because they do not understand it, but rather because they understand it to be shit. The game has an action battle system, and a player’s melee attacks are limited by a stamina bar which Square Enix are calling an ATB because they think we are stupid. From there equipped materia will likely be cycled through with the L and R shoulder buttons, and spells will be executed with the triangle button. There, that was Final Fantasy VII Remake‘s battle system summed up by human words in its entirety, and it did not take any great deliberation.

“We’ve heard a lot of Final Fantasy VII fans also say that they want to play the game with the original ATB style, but for the remake we’re proceeding toward an action-heavy style. Of course, we’ve added systems that future fans will be able to enjoy, so people who are bad at action-style battles, please don’t worry.”

That is Square Enix in a nutshell. Worry about future fans, but do not give two shits about prior or current fans. More insulting still is the implied notion that people are only against this new battle system because they are bad at action games, rather than simply because it robs the game of strategy, and will likely be pathetically easy.

“For those who excel at action-style battles, we’re working to make this a system that’s different than what you’ve used before and can still enjoy. Recently, we checked the Guard Scorpion at the beginning of the game, and I think you’ll be satisfied with the realism you’ll feel there.”

Who gives an everloving fuck about realism when fighting a giant robot scorpion? Literally nobody is going to be picking up Final Fantasy VII RemakeFinal Fantasy VII Remake: Part 1 in the eager anticipation of getting their hands on some quality Square Enix realism! Nomura, you are a dunce – kill yourself!

Is the game being sold on nostalgia alone?

World of Final Fantasy Demo Immanent

From World of Final Fantasy‘s media debut, the game has been on the gaming radar of a great many people – and it is not hard to see why. Rather than being beholden to a trendy action battle system, the game utilises Squaresoft’s beloved ATB system, and then adds to that the addictive ‘gotta catch em all’ monster mechanics of Pokemon. These tried and tested gaming mechanics serve as a solid foundation upon which Square Enix has sought to heap great mounds of Final Fantasy nostalgia – both in terms of fan-favourite characters as well as familiar locations, such as an impressive looking recreation of Balamb Garden. All of this is then served up by a visual direction that could best be described as Kingdom Hearts meets Funko Pop.

While the premise of World of Final Fantasy holds a great deal of promise, there is also the distinct potential that its characters and narrative will prove to be hollow fanservice like Dissidia or Theatrhythm. The development team has previously stated that they will be balancing the game’s light-hearted tone with a more weighty story befitting of a mainline installment of the Final Fantasy series, yet early impressions [including an early Game Informer review] make it sound like this is not the case at all. According to the review the gameplay is great and the nostalgia hits home, but the overarching story is low-stakes and the character dialogue is cringy. Apparently one of the lead characters was deliberately written to be a moron, presumably in an attempt at humour. Possibly the reviewer simply does not like JRPG character types, yet one would not put it past Square Enix to make one of the game’s leading characters a Snow-tier lunkhead.

It is for this reason that it is quite fortunate that Square Enix has decided to release a demo for the game when PSN updates this week, so that Playstation owners can gauge the quality of the title for themselves. The demo will be releasing for both PS4 and PS Vita versions of the game, with the full game releasing on the 25th of this month. Playing through the demo will unlock the ability to fight and capture ‘Magic Armor P’ in the colluseum located in the full game, so anyone with a mind to purchase World of Final Fantasy would do well to play the demo first.

Is Nintendo really going to attempt to sell a $300 handheld?

Macquarie Downgrades Nintendo

Mobile app releases not withstanding, Nintendo has never been in a worse spot with respect to their brand relevance within the gaming market. The Wii U is essentially dead at this point, though in all honesty to say it was ever alive is a bit of a stretch. The console is now dead, and worse still despite having some fun games, there is not currently a game on Wii U that one could truly regard as essential. Nintendo throughout the Wii U generation has played it increasingly safe when it comes to the development of their franchises, so while they still make quality games, those games are increasingly derivative of past experiences. The lack of compelling software combined with the Wii U being priced far too expensively has led to a situation wherein the Wii U has virtually no relevance to today’s gamers – and now it looks as though Nintendo may be on the verge of repeating the same senseless mistake.

This week Macquarie, a financial analysis firm, has downgraded Nintendo’s market position from ‘Outperform’ to ‘Neutral’. The reason that Macquarie had previously listed Nintendo’s stock as ‘Outperform’ was on the strength of Nintendo’s recent smartphone app sales in combination with the fact that the big N were on the verge of releasing the NX, yet they apparently lowered their outlook on the company after receiving information suggesting that the NX would be priced between $300 and $350 – a price-point which would obviously seriously harm Nintendo’s ability to sell the NX. Macquarie does not reveal their source for this information, so obviously it must be taken with a grain of salt [as it could very well be Michael Pachter]. That being said, one could totally see Nintendo doing this.

In their mind the NX is Nintendo’s next home console with the added benefit of being able to play on the go and they wish the RRP to reflect this, yet to the audience at large the NX is just Nintendo’s follow-up to the 3DS with the added feature of being able to play it through the TV – like the PSP. When the Wii U launched it cost $300 for the basic model and $350 for the ‘deluxe’ model, and the pricing of both SKUs was deemed as being far too expensive by the mass video game market. When the 3DS launched it did so at the price of $250, a price that nearly killed it. Nintendo had to move quickly to cut its price to $170, which was accompanied by many grovelling apologies along with Nintendo’s famous ‘ambassadors’ program. Could the company really be thick enough to try this bullshit once again? To succeed the NX needs to be cheap and cheery. $300 is not cheap and cheery. One hopes for Nintendo’s sake that Macquarie have been getting their information from Pachter.

8 Comments

I would actually still be okay with a $300 launch price if the thought that has been resting in the back of my head for the last, oh, 15 years, should ring out true; that Nintendo should just drop the shelf-sitting console market and focus everything they have on a fantastically robust, powerful, and truly portable handheld.

@Java: They won’t. It’ll be underpowered by current standards (let alone those of March 2017 when the next line of iPads will launch). And they’ll debut at a price point just $100 south of a new iPad Pro. Watch and see.